As Erda would say, “All that is will end”, and Marek Janowski’s
toweringly ambitious Wagner project ends, appropriately, with the Twilight
of the Gods themselves. Janowski’s cycle has been both fulfilling
and infuriating by turns, and his Götterdämmerung proves
likewise. However, there is much to enjoy and a lot to write home about.

Throughout this project, the three things that have impressed me most consistently
are the quality of Pentatone’s recorded sound, the stunning playing
of the Berlin Radio orchestra and the committed work of the Berlin Radio
chorus; and those things remain the finest features of this performance
too. The sound of the orchestra really gleams throughout. The brass sound
fantastic at the big climaxes, such as the dawn scene in the Prologue or
the Funeral March, and the strings can both shimmer and terrify as
they need to. There is subtlety aplenty, too, such as the delicate darkness
of Hagen’s Watch, or the lovely moment after Waltraute’s departure
when Brünnhilde’s flames flicker up with the onset of evening.
The chorus are fantastic in the second act, too. The Vassals arrive on the
scene spitting fire - their articulation of their consonants is brilliant
- and their acclamation of Gunther is thrilling, but they are every bit
as careful in their more subtle whisperings during the hunting scene. The
Pentatone engineers pick it all up with thrilling clarity. A couple of times
their placing of singers is a little unusual - the Norn scene feels as though
a dark pall has been cast over it, and the Rhinemaidens sound unusually
distant to me - though this may be my perception rather than anything else.
In every other case the quality of the sound is a triumph, and I was listening
only in stereo, so I can only imagine how it must come to life in SACD surround.

Janowski, who has been the lynchpin of this entire project, does a pretty
good, though ultimately inconsistent job. Throughout the project he has
shown his preference for quick tempi and that comes through in Götterdämmerung
too, but he mixes the quick with the measured in a way that, for me at least,
jumped about and broke up the flow of the line. The dawn scene in the Prologue,
for example, moves at a fair lick, as does the entire scene through the
duet and the Rhine Journey. The same is true of the Funeral March
and, while some may enjoy the sense of momentum he generates, to me it robbed
the music of much of its titanic power, seeming to hustle quickly from one
episode to the next. It’s inconsistent (though not unwelcome), therefore,
that he takes the other great transition, Hagen’s Watch, at a steady
tempo that is fairly orthodox. It’s also more successful, to my ears,
picking out every element of Wagner’s ever so subtle orchestration
in a way that lets it breathe and even glower in the gathering darkness.
Other episodes are similarly inconsistent. The outer episodes of Waltraute’s
scene are, for me, too fast, but the all-important central section centring
on Erlöst wär’ Gott und Welt rocks slowly and gently.
Likewise, the great trio at the end of Act 2 feels rather busy and businesslike.
There’s a great extent to which these preferences are personal, but
I found a lot of them alienating.

The singing is a fairly mixed bag too, unfortunately. Starting with the
Gibichungs, Markus Brück is a slightly anonymous Gunther, though that
could be his choice of characterisation and it’s not an invalid one.
Edith Haller, on the other hand is a characterful and sweet-voiced Gutrune.
Finer even, however, is Matti Salminen’s black-as-night Hagen. He
is the only survivor from Janowski’s earlier Dresden cycle, and in
the same role, to boot. Comparisons between the two are very interesting.
Inevitably, the voice has a lot less juice in 2013 than it had in 1983,
but his characterisation of the role is, in fact, even more exciting, refined
by three decades of singing the role in the theatre. His acting leaps out
of the speakers and there are umpteen examples of him bringing the character
to wicked life: listen, for one example, to the moment in the first act
where he takes Grane off to the stable. His baleful call to the Vassals
could wake the dead, and those Hoihos threaten to depart from tonality
as we understand it, but in this case that’s a good thing. Jochen
Schmeckenbecher is deliciously malevolent in his brief scene, and it makes
you wish there was an excuse to hear more of him. Norns and Rhinemaidens
all perform their duties very capably, and Marina Prudenskaya is a perfectly
solid Waltraute, if a touch too stressed in the part for my taste.

The biggest problems, however, come with the hero and heroine. Unlike Jim
Pritchard, I had serious reservations about Petra Lang’s Brünnhilde
in Walküre, and they were confirmed here. Her natural style
of singing the role is to work, almost to haul herself up to the
note so that nearly every phrase sounds like hard work. Never does she sound
as though she is attacking the note from a position of strength, nor that
she is sitting on it comfortably rather than climbing towards it. This effortful
singing quickly becomes wearing, and it robs her interpretation of the required
nobility, despite her not unpleasant vocal colour. She can be thrilling
in Wagner - just listen to her Kundry or Ortrud, for example - but I just
don’t think this is her role. Lance Ryan has similar problems, but
with him it is more about vocal colour and energy. He sounds tired and frequently
racked with effort; not quite worn out yet, but not that far away. There
is a gravelly, abrasive quality to the voice that, again, is not in the
least bit heroic, and things get worse as the opera progresses. The oath
on the spear and the exhortation to the wedding feast are, to say the least,
a trial to listen to, though he rallies for the death scene in the final
act.

All of this means that, in spite of its many virtues, you can’t accept
this Götterdämmerung as a front runner on its own terms.
However, perhaps we should see it in the context of the project as a whole,
because there can surely be little doubt that Janowski’s Wagner cycle
is one of the most extraordinary (and, dare I say it, unexpected) achievements
to have emerged from classical recording in recent years. Few conductors
get to record the Ring twice, but no other on record has been able
to conduct all of Wagner’s mature music dramas in a planned cycle
with the same orchestra, chorus and recording team. The only approximation
is Solti’s direction of the same ten operas with the Vienna Philharmonic
on Decca, but that emerged piecemeal and in an unplanned manner over nearly
three decades, whereas Janowski’s was carefully planned and coordinated.
Remarkably, only 26 months separate the first instalment (Holländer
in November 2010) from the last one (this Götterdämmerung).
Regardless of what you might think of individual quibbles, you have got
to take your hat off to everyone involved for the sheer ambition and undaunted
achievement of the whole thing.

I’ve heard all and reviewed most of the cycle, and the highlights
for me are Tannhäuser
and Parsifal.
Both these operas benefit from outstanding casting and musical commitment
that is above the ordinary, and these are the two that I’ll come back
to most quickly. Lohengrin
and Meistersinger
are perfectly fine, and considerably more than that in places, but I found
Tristan
infuriating, mostly because of Janowski’s conducting. Ringwise,
his earlier Dresden cycle is more consistent and, on the whole, more enjoyable
- if you can put up with Theo Adam’s desiccated Wotan and the hardworking
but affecting Brünnhilde of Jeanine Altmeyer - but I enjoyed lots of
elements of this Ring too, especially Rheingold
and Siegfried,
and Tomasz Konieczny is an enormously interesting Wotan. Walküre,
though, was notable for a great pair of Wälsung twins, which brings
me to Robert Dean Smith who wins my award for finest overall contribution
to the project. Be it as Erik, Tannhäuser, Siegmund or Walther, I always
loved whatever he brought to each role and I will listen to each one again
just for him. As for the conducting: well, yes, it has been inconsistent,
and quibblers might dream of what could have happened if the cycle had been
conducted by someone else - say, Thielemann or Bychkov - but that would
perhaps be to miss the point. Janowski is one of the few conductors who
would be able to perform the task - not least because he has now stopped
conducting opera in the theatre, something he talks about here
- and he is the only one who had the vision to carry it through. Despite
its many flaws, this cycle wins a special award of affection for its scale,
vision and purpose which is, in every sense, Wagnerian.